


this odd diversity of misery and joy

by EtherealPrince



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1930s, Charles Xavier has a Ph.D in Adorable, Drinking, Erik Lehnsherr is not a Happy Bunny, First Meetings, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia but it's barely mentioned, Smoking, dadneto, old fashioned gay clubs, useless details about new york
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:49:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27357562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtherealPrince/pseuds/EtherealPrince
Summary: It's 1938, and Charles Xavier frequents a homosexual nightclub in uptown Manhattan. One night he watches the performance of a singer with the most wonderful voice he's ever heard and the most staggeringly gorgeous face he's ever seen, and believes he's too good to be working in such a small, seedy place.He only finds out why he's at the club when they meet face-to-face, a few weeks later.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 20
Kudos: 62





	this odd diversity of misery and joy

The B line is very crowded on a friday night.

Everyone’s off from work by now, and if they’re not off from work they’re heading to it. Seats are given to the elderly and disabled and everyone else packs themselves into the train cars like they’re sardines. It’s only eight o’ clock, but New York is the city that never sleeps.

The newspaper Charles had picked up on the way to the station read _RADIO LISTENERS IN PANIC, TAKING WAR DRAMA AS FACT,_ and he chuckled behind it as he flipped through the pages of the daily news. Orson Welles reads a very good novel on the radio and everyone starts going mad--very American, if he did say so himself. It was 1938, he thought, not 1897. You’d think people would have more sense.

Then again, Charles could arguably have less sense than the average man himself, due to his choice in weekly entertainment venues. Nobody ever went to uptown Manhattan if they were feeling particularly highfalutin, or if they wanted a place to throw all their money away--that was where the degenerates and those desperate for a shag went after the more admirable patrons had cleared out the city for the night.

Charles was not a degenerate. He was a perfectly commendable schoolteacher, thank you very much, and the fact that he was a homosexual as well had absolutely nothing to do with his value of character. 

Every weekend, be it on Friday or Saturday or Sunday, Charles left his modest abode in Queens and traveled into Manhattan to attend the nightly amusements offered by _The Calypso,_ a club stationed in a seedier part of already-seedy uptown that didn’t care who you fucked so long as you were a paying patron. It was a small comfort that he didn’t have to replace man with woman when talking there, to replace future husband with future wife. No one looked at him strangely for being slight of stature or pretty of face. No one said ‘but what of your young pupils!’ when he mentioned his preference for the more handsome specimen of human being.

His students couldn’t care less who they loved, he would have liked to reply, but he never had in such a way. He didn’t want to lose his job.

The B chugs along underground and Charles skims his newspaper. A woman sitting next to him reapplies her lipstick, and when she’s done she turns to him and taps him delicately on the shoulder.

He tilts his newspaper down to regard her curiously, and she tilts her head at him. “How do I look?”

Charles offers her a flirtatious smile. “Lovely.”

She giggles, and pulls the collar of her coat further up her neck, and blows Charles a kiss when she stands to get off at the subway’s next stop. When she’s gone, the remnants of that smile slide depressingly off of his face.

He never did have the heart to reject any young lady looking for a bit of innocent attention. If she had stayed any longer she would have been quite disappointed.

Well, he thinks, an hour or two in the club should get rid of that depression. The drinks there were expensive, and Charles only ever got one whenever he visited (unless someone was generous enough to buy for him), but they always worked in a pinch.

He folds up his newspaper and taps it lightly on his knee in some nonsensical rhythm for the rest of the ride, staring off into space away from any other riders, and blinks himself out of his reverie when the 135th Street sign comes into view from the window across from him. Charles tucks the paper under his arm and gently elbows his way through the crowd to exit the train, moving with the mass of people in the station like a fish in its school until he emerges onto the sidewalk and the humid nighttime air.

The Calypso is a few blocks away from 135th Street in Harlem, tucked away between larger skyscrapers and big flashing signs. Charles looks like any other commuter heading to or from work in his grey suit, hands in his pockets, but when he ducks into the alleyway where the club’s front door is located, the bouncer at the front calls him Charlie and lets him in with a swift pat on his lower back. Veritably, not so very common.

Charles raps his knuckles on the bar and orders a rum and coke, which the bartender begins to prepare while he heads to his little table just to the right of the stage in the middle-back of the club. A young woman with dark hair places his glass down in front of him a few minutes later, and with a polite smile he thanks her and sends her on her way. Now, settled in his little corner with something to warm his insides and make him stop thinking about rent or work or troublesome family issues, Charles lets himself relax.

It smells like cigarette smoke and overpowering perfume in the club; he takes a sip of his drink and he smells alcohol too. This is New York beneath the glitz and glamour and Hollywood romanticizing; this is New York at its most alive and surviving. This is where the oppressed and the desperate (yes, the desperate, including Charles) come to escape the drone of their humdrum lives and get happy for just one night. He feels at home here.

No one is playing on the stage right now, but they have a microphone set up in front of a piano and set of drums. Trumpets and a saxophone sit carefully on stools in-between them. Charles wonders if he’s missed the musical talent for the night and will be watching drag queens in all their splendor instead.

Apparently not, he learns a few minutes later, when the house lights dim and someone puts a red filter over them from above. Smoke swirling in the air casts shadows on the now bloody-crimson stage and its curtain, and Charles leans back in his chair to see if who, if anybody, would be stepping onstage to perform for the pansies.

A lengthy shadow eclipses the stage before its body follows it out, athletic and lean and like a big cat in its movements. It’s a man, sharp and striking, with long elegant limbs and broad shoulders and a torso that tapers almost impossibly inward. Charles wishes the lighting wasn’t all red when he sees him, because it is that much harder to parse the color of his hair and his eyes when everything is washed out. 

The mysterious performer wraps slender fingers around the stem of the microphone while his musical accompaniment enters from backstage and sits at their respective instruments. The pianist opens the keylid of the piano and the drummer twirls his drumsticks in his fingers, and the performer (most presumably a singer of some sort) looks back at them in confirmation. Charles can’t keep his eyes off the performer’s hands, his arms, how tall he is. Thank god he’s shrouded in darkness from the point of view of anyone on stage.

The pianist nods at the singer, and counts out a ‘1, 2, 3, 4’ inaudible to the audience, and the horns start up an unflinching beat that the drummer accompanies with the soft hihat of a funeral march, and the saxophone drones low and humming in a melancholy drawl that is intoxicating to the ear.

The singer sways on the stage to the beat as if lost in a trance, and opens his mouth to sing the beginning verse of the _St. James Infirmary Blues._

_Folks, I’m goin’ down to St. James Infirmary…_  
_See my baby there._  
_She’s stretched out on a long, white table...she’s so sweet, so cold, so fair._

Charles is absolutely entranced by the performer’s stage presence and crooning voice. He’s alluring, almost seductive, but still masculine and strapping in a way that makes Charles shiver and his head heat up. He’s holding the microphone so close to his mouth his lips brush against it whenever he sounds out a hard consonant, and his dark eyes are tilted down under long eyelashes like he was in a daze. Charles watches the way his cheeks hollow and then fill out as his mouth moves around the lyrics of the song and knows he’s focusing much too hard on the singer’s pronounced cheekbones. His voice is low, husky, with just the right amount of breathiness in it to be borderline sexual but still loud enough to be beautiful in song. He curves his r’s, flattens his o’s, in an accent Charles can’t quite place but is enchanted by all the same.

When the horns fade out and the pianist trails off and the singer ends that last _“St. James Infirmary blues…”_ The lights blink back into regular color and the club applauds quietly without much fanfare, but Charles is infatuated.

Broken out of his stupor brought on by the music, the singer looks much less ethereal and much more rough around the exterior as he bows slightly to the audience. He’s no less handsome, certainly, but when he’s not performing his eyebrows knit together as if troubled and his eyes seem to be permanently cast downward. Charles’ eyes follow a fine line in the skin from the corner of the singer’s mouth up to the side of his nose, and then up to his eyes, which he can see are a cool blue-ish green. His hair is a dark blonde, almost auburn in color, and is neatly pushed back from his forehead in a subtle swoop. He’s absolutely beautiful, staggeringly so, and he’s exactly Charles’ type.

Out of the corner of his eye, Charles sees a young server maneuvering around the tables and picking up tips for the entertainment patrons have left out under their drinks and have handed to her, and he fumbles for his wallet before she reaches him. Fingering through the bills he has on his person, Charles pulls out a fiver and slaps it on the table before he can regret letting that much money go all at once. He might miss it--his rent certainly will--but this singer, this extraordinary talent, certainly deserved it more than he did. The server slips it into her hand among the other bills once she passes him and moves on to see if she missed anyone, and Charles slumps in his seat, exhausted from those thirty seconds alone.

Back up on stage, the singer and his band are preparing for the next song in their set for the night. Charles resolves to stay until its end, no matter how late into the night it takes him.

When it does finally end, Charles feels like he has just woken up from a wonderful dream. The house lights go back up to their normal brightness and the singer plus his accompaniment leave the stage quietly and inconspicuously, and the club continues its service on into the night. Charles stands up and ambles over to the bartender to ask the time.

“Almost eleven p.m.” Is the answer he gets, and his eyes grow wide. This mysterious siren of a man had kept him in the club for almost three hours!

Thank god the trains ran all night, because Charles wasn’t keen on catching a cab all the way back to Queens. He exits _The Calypso_ in a haze, meandering down the street back to the subway station with his head full of thoughts of blue-green eyes and a low lilting voice, and dreams about the singer all the way back home. This stranger he had never seen before in his life had occupied his thoughts like no other ever had.

\-------

The next Friday, Charles makes a point to attend the club at the same time he did previously. He takes the B at the same time of evening, the bouncer at the door greets him just like he did every time Charles turned up, and he took his same little table to the right of the stage. Even though it had no effect on whether he’d see the performer again, he orders the same drink--just in case.

Luckily for him, the singer strolls onstage after he’d been sitting and nursing his rum and coke for around a half hour, and just like before Charles’ attention is thoroughly and completely drawn to him. He’s wearing slick black slacks and shiny wingtip shoes, suspenders stretch up over his chest and loop around his wide shoulders, and a thin black tie marks a long line down his sternum and down to…

Charles pulls his eyes up and away from the singer’s crotch before he feels like too much of a degenerate.

Tonight, the enigmatic performer starts off his set with Noël Coward’s _Mad About the Boy,_ which as a subtle nod to homosexuality in modern society makes Charles warm with admiration for the singer’s wonderful taste in music. As he settles back in his seat and listens to the man’s melodic voice and its piano accompaniment, he knows it’s not just the rum that’s warming his insides.

Charles stays for his entire set again--another almost-three hours of his life gone, but most certainly not wasted. He watches the performer’s back as he drifts offstage once more, and pulls out another five dollar bill from his wallet to pass to the server when she comes around collecting tips for the entertainment. He’s going to drain himself dry for the man at this point, but talent like that just couldn’t go unrewarded.

Charles wasn’t rich, by any means, not since his stepfather had cut him off from the family fortune some years ago--but he made enough to make a living and pay his rent, so it was enough for him. Skipping a meal or two in the coming weeks he could manage if the club singer appreciated the extra little something he got for his work.

There’s a dumb grin on Charles’ face when he leaves the club, and it’s still there when he collapses into bed for the night at home.

\-----------

The third time Charles takes the B into uptown and enters _The Calypso_ with the intent of seeing his singer (he had started referring to the man as his sometime earlier in the week), he had made an actual attempt to clean himself up and dress well before he left his home. He had combed his hair back and kept it out of his face with pomade, shaved, dabbed cologne under his jaw, and dressed in a three-piece suit--all just to make sure the singer saw him at his best, if he saw him at all.

He hadn’t seen him the first two times, but Charles was a believer in luck, and three times was the charm. It was just in case, he kept telling himself, just in case.

By now, the bouncer and the bartender and the server all know what he’s here for, and his rum and coke is sitting on his table when he walks up to it to take a seat. Charles would feel more ashamed if this was a normal club in a more reputable part of town, but if anything the workers here found his little obsession with the singer endearing or cute.

It was foolish, is what it was, but Charles wasn’t going to admit that any time soon. 

He’s sitting stock-straight and attentive when the performers enter from stage right, his singer just as impeccably dressed and groomed as he usually was. He had the sleeves of his button-down pushed up to his elbows and his forearms were so defined it was almost sinful. Charles watches the veins in the back of his hand move as he grasps the microphone and his eyes flick up to his lips when he clears his throat minutely. Anything he sung, Charles would be absolutely entranced by.

Tonight the singer starts off his set with _You Are My Lucky Star,_ written by Nacio Herb Brown. It’s a much kinder, romantic song than most of what the singer had performed at the club thus far, and when the lights go down and the music starts up his singing is heartfelt, emotional, soft. His eyebrows knit together as he sings, looking down and forward but observing nothing, and his expression holds a kind of tragic beauty that makes Charles fall in love with him all the more than he already has.

This man shouldn’t be here, Charles thinks, he belongs on a bigger stage with a bigger audience for bigger pay. He’s walked down Broadway and looked up at the billboards displaying names and titles for thousands of people to see, he’s watched famous actors roll down the streets in fancy cars and walk out onto red carpets and into droves of flashing cameras, screaming fans, blinding lights. If they could just hear his singer’s voice when he’s at the mic, just once, Charles knew they’d love him. He deserves so much more for his talent than singing for downtrodden homosexuals in a (technically) illegal club in uptown New York. 

The depression may be over for the rest of the city, but for the types of people that frequented _The Calypso_ it was still going strong, and despite the struggle and suppression Charles felt exceedingly lucky just to be able to hear this performer sing. He deserved more than this, that much was true, but Charles would be lying if he said he wanted him to leave Harlem for The Great White Way. He was like a diamond in the rough, a one-in-a-million talent that no one would ever expect to find in a pansy club after dark. It was selfish compared to his earlier thoughts, but Charles wanted him to stay.

At the end of the performer’s set when Charles digs in his wallet for another fiver, the server girl stops at his table with a hand on her hip and looks him up and down. She takes the bill slowly as her eyes scrutinize him, almost accusatory in the low light. Charles looks behind himself briefly before raising an eyebrow at her, questioning.

“So you’re the guy pouring your money out for Lehnsherr on Fridays, huh?” She asks him, and Charles’ brain immediately focuses on the last name he now can assign to the singer’s face. It sounded German--perhaps that’s where the exotic accent was from.

It takes him a second to reply. “--Yes? I suppose I am, yes. What of it?”

The server laughs shortly, a single _ha,_ and points her thumb to the back of the club, behind the stage. “He was asking about you last week. Wanted to know who keeps tipping so much.” She takes Charles’ five dollar bill and waves it in the air in front of his face. “He’s gonna be surprised to get another one of these for the third week in a row.”

Charles knows he is most definitely blushing from the thought of his singer wanting to know who he was, _him,_ just one single patron of the club who had a special interest in his talent and looks. Thankfully, the lighting is dim. “Well…” He starts, lost for what to say. “Well, you can tell him I think he’s worth all the money I can afford to give.”

He could just barely afford losing five dollars a week, and that included skipping a couple meals in its effects on his life, but it was the truth. The mysterious singer was worth all that and more.

The server smiles, her cheeks dimpling. She pokes him on the lapel of his jacket and motions for him to stand up with her finger-- “I think you ought to tell him that yourself, mister.”

Charles blinks at her. Tell him that--himself? He felt like a child who was just told he was going to meet Clark Gable or Gary Cooper. He had been thinking and daydreaming about his singer for weeks, at this point, and this server just gave him _permission_ to go backstage and meet him? It couldn’t possibly be that easy. He couldn’t possibly be that lucky. It felt too good to be true.

To hell if he wasn’t going to take the opportunity, though, so Charles stands from his table and straightens his waistcoat and jacket-- “Please, lead the way.” He offers, motioning vaguely to the back while trying to will his heart to cease its beating so quickly.

The server snickers at him and turns around, cocking her head as a sign for him to follow her. Charles maneuvers around tables and people still savoring their drinks as he’s led backstage, to a narrow hallway that holds dressing rooms behind closed doors. The server stops near the end of the hall, close to the exit out to the alleyway behind the building, and taps the door in front of her with the back of her knuckles. “You have a visitor, Mr. Lehnsherr.”

Charles looks at her incredulously. Is she just going to--to leave him here, with the singer? Leave him to make a fool of himself?

Judging by her cheeky grin, the answer is maybe.

There’s a rustling inside the dressing room. The server winks at Charles, and spins around to leave, but he catches her by the forearm before she can get too far. She flinches, and he takes his hand off her, raising it in a placating manner. “Sorry. Thank you, for letting me back here, miss…?”

“Angel.” The server responds, flipping dark hair behind her shoulder. “Nobody gets my real name but that’s what I’m called. Good luck, loverboy.” And then she slinks off back down the hallway to the front of the club, her heeled footsteps echoing against the walls as she leaves Charles and the singer-- Mr. Lehnsherr, apparently--alone with each other.

Charles takes a deep breath in and lets it out, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. Footsteps approach the door from inside the dressing room and he goes still.

The singer tugs the door open and braces his other hand on the doorframe, mouth open as if to say something, but when he sees Charles he stops. He’s staring down at Charles with those lovely ocean-colored eyes under straight furrowed eyebrows, and his suspenders are hanging down around his hips and his tie is loosened around his long neck, and it’s very obvious he has no idea who Charles is. Wonderful.

“Who are you.”

Charles suddenly feels like an ant under the heel of somebody’s shoe. 

Lehnsherr’s speaking voice is just as beautiful as his singing voice, low and purring and still shaping his vowels and consonants in that strange way, but Charles most certainly cannot be thinking about that right now because he has to say something. Something, anything.

“I’m--Angel brought me back here because you said-”

Lehnsherr interrupts him with a loud sigh in the middle of his sentence, rolling his head around on his neck and scratching the bottom of his jaw with one hand while he motions Charles inside the dressing room with his other. From that alone, Charles could assume that he and Angel had some kind of rapport.

He politely closes the door behind himself and stuffs his hands nervously in his pockets while he watches Lehnsherr pace back to his mirror at the back of the room and take a cigarette out of a pack from where it was sat on a table. He sticks it in his mouth, where it sits between white teeth as he looks around for a lighter. When he can’t find one, he approaches Charles again.

“Have a light?”

Charles is all too eager to fumble in the pockets of his jacket for his lighter, and when he does he opens the cap and flicks the flame on before holding it up _much_ too close to Lehnsherr’s face. Lehnsherr pinches two fingers around the cig at its base in his lips and leans forward to let it catch flame, pulling back and sucking on it for a second before taking it out and exhaling a cloud of smoke out at Charles, all the while inspecting Charles like he was for some reason not to be trusted.

“What did Angel say I said.” He asks Charles, and while he slips the lighter back into the folds of his jacket Charles has a bit of a hard time remembering exactly what he had been told, because the image of Lehnsherr’s lips around the cigarette is staying in his brain for far longer than was necessary.

“Oh-- she said, she said you wanted to meet me?” 

Lehnsherr raises an eyebrow at him, takes another drag.

Charles tries again: “She said you wanted to know who your, ah, generous tipper was. I’m he.” He’s got a sheepish kind of smile on his face that he hopes is some level of charming, and as he thinks back to just how much money he’s tipped Lehnsherr in the past month or so he feels himself heat back up at the prospect of how that might make Lehnsherr see him.

Fortunately, his words seem to finally get a reaction out of Lehnsherr that wasn’t disdain or boredom. Unfortunately, that reaction is very obviously anger.

Lehnsherr drops his (barely smoked) cigarette and stamps it into the ground as he advances on Charles, crowding him up against the door of the dressing room and gripping his bicep with a large hand. His face is twisted in anger and his eyes are wide in fear.

“You,” He growls, baring rows of straight, sharp teeth at Charles. “So you’re the one with the big bills and endless wallet, eh?” His voice turns poisonous as he hisses at him, dangerous. Charles has no idea why his actions could have inspired such animosity.

“Wh--what?”

Lehnsherr pulls him forward and then slams him back against the door. “Don’t play dumb with me. Nobody spends that kind of tipping money on pansy club entertainment, I want to know who sent you.”

Charles blinks, eyes wide with surprise. _“Sent_ me?”

_“Who?”_ Lehnsherr shouts, shaking him. “If you’re Shaw’s, then I’m going to throw you out the back and I better not see you in Harlem ever again, you hear me? _Ever!”_

Charles has no idea who Shaw is, who Lehnsherr thinks he’s working for, what’s going on. All he can do is stand there, tense as a support wire on the Manhattan Bridge, and sputter. “I don’t--I don’t understand, I don’t _work_ for anybody.” He stammers. He screws his eyes closed, tilting his head to the side and away from Lehnsherr’s eyes, now furious like a storm- “I’m from Queens, I’m a schoolteacher, I...I just thought that you deserved more than what everybody else in the club was paying you.”

“You can’t possibly expect me to believe that.” Lehnsherr scoffs at him, and against his better judgement Charles finds himself actually getting a little irritated. What about him, exactly, was so unbelievable?

“It’s true! I work in Astoria and I have the privilege of teaching the only desegregated classroom in the borough, my students are all charming and I enjoy teaching them very much--”

Lehnsherr waves his free hand in front of Charles’ face, presumably to get him to shut up. “I don’t want a life story, _arschkrampe,_ I want the truth. Who do you work for?”

Charles looks up at him, terrified but stubborn. “I don’t work for anyone.” He says, sounding out every word as clearly as he can manage in his panicked state. “Yes, maybe I’ve been clearing out my wallet a little over what’s acceptable, but I don’t mind! Your singing, it’s--it’s just lovely, and I so adore hearing you perform.”

Lehnsherr looks at him like he’s an idiot, which--he very well might be, but Charles liked to think he wasn’t. He stares up at the taller man with wide blue eyes, praying he’s believable even though he never lied in the first place.

“Did Shaw send you? Frost? Are they giving you money?”

Charles shakes his head. “No, nobody’s giving me money. I don’t know who you’re talking about. I can stop tipping, if you’d prefer, I don’t want to--”

Lehnsherr lets go of his arm then, planting both hands on his hips with a sharp breath out, and Charles rubs his bicep where the ghost of his grip remains. He looks...almost disappointed. A little ashamed. Charles thinks his offer to _cease_ tipping was the thing that was believable.

“So you’re not a gangster.” He asks Charles, though it’s more like a statement he wants confirmation on. Charles is appalled that anyone would think he seemed gangster-like in the first place.

“No, god no, of course I’m not. What--what do the gangs want with you, anyway?” He asks, and immediately after he finishes his sentence he knows that was a bad question to ask. Lehnsherr shoots him a stinkeye that could rival John Dillinger’s. “Nevermind, nevermind. Bad question.”

Satisfied with his backing up, Lehnsherr looks down at his snuffed out cigarette on the floor with some kind of longing and then back up at Charles. He looks much less angry than he did a few minutes ago, but just as scared. Charles can see how haunted he is--whatever business he has or had with gangs obviously wasn’t good, and he wasn’t sure how much he wanted to know about it.

Charles wrings his hands and takes a tentative step forward into the dressing room, toward the paranoid Lehnsherr. “I’m sorry.” He offers silently. “I really do admire your talent, and I only wanted to make sure you knew that you were worth paying for. I had no idea about…” He gestures vaguely to nothing in particular. 

Lehnsherr sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose. He looks down at Charles and after a tense moment of hesitation wherein Charles can see him biting his lip, just slightly, he sticks out his hand for Charles to shake. He does so.

“Erik Lehnsherr.” The singer finally introduces himself, and Charles has to hold back his grin. “I was a captive hitman for eight years.”

That second part makes Charles sober considerably, and the most eerie thing about it is that Erik says it so casually. It puts him in an entirely new light, one both terrifying and tragic, and Charles is fascinated with him. It’s certainly a good explanation for his hostility towards gangs.

“Charles Xavier.” He introduces himself back, sliding his hand into his pocket after he’s shaken Erik’s. “I’m...so sorry to hear that. I’m very happy you’re out--you are, aren’t you?”

Erik scoffs at him, but his mouth is pulled into a wry grin. “Yes, for around eleven years now--and I never plan to go back.”

A wave of relief rolls over Charles like warm water on a sunny day. “That’s certainly very good to hear. And--how long have you been working at the club?”

“Not long. I’ve hopped around in town, I’ve only been performing here for a few months.” Erik replies, and it makes sense--Charles hadn’t seen him before a few weeks ago, and he had been frequenting _The Calypso_ for quite a while now. “And--sorry, this is completely off topic, but--” He mumbles, apologetically. “Your accent- you don’t sound like you’re from around here.”

Charles exhales a laugh. “My parents were english.” He explains. “But I can assure you I’m a born and raised American. I’m from Westchester, upstate, but I live in Queens.”

Erik hums, and suddenly it feels like they’re just two acquaintances making conversation. It isn’t Charles being threatened by and then charmed by a musician he’s been dreaming about for around a month now, they’re just...people talking. 

“Your accent isn’t quite American either, though,” Charles points out, then. “And I couldn’t help but notice you swore at me in German.”

That one gets a laugh.

“You got me. My parents and I emigrated here from Düsseldorf when I was around ten.”

“How lovely. I’ve never been to Germany but I’d love to go someday.”

“Perhaps I’ll just have to take you.”

That felt like flirting, Charles thinks, but he pushes that thought to the back of his head and reassures himself that Erik wasn’t the type of man to make a move on someone he just accused of being a gangster out for his life. Nonetheless, he’d be willing to be taken anywhere by the man. For now, he just chuckles.

“You just might have to, indeed. Do your parents live in town?”

Erik sucks in a breath and the easy smile he had adopted fades. “They died a long time ago.”

Charles hopes he didn’t wince too obviously, but he definitely felt himself do it. “I’m so sorry.”

He’s waved off dismissively, and it strikes him that Erik had probably had to tell people that his parents were dead too many times for it to affect him anymore. The revelation is depressing. “No use fretting over it. I know they’d be happy I’m safe.”

“Are you?”

“Yes,” Erik says honestly. “This job keeps me unknown to the general public and pays the bills, and...well, I like to sing.”

_That’s_ why he’s not up on Broadway with the rest of the stars, Charles realizes, and like a puzzle piece falling into place everything clicks. It was so much better for a man like Erik to play for small crowds at seedy bars where no one was likely to recognize him from his gangster days, where he could keep his head down and live a life of relative peace while still getting to do something he enjoyed. It’s...sad, that Erik will likely never know the fame Charles believes he deserves.

It must show on his face, because Erik regards him with a type of amusement that makes Charles feel just slightly embarrassed. “Don’t get me wrong, I _like_ being unknown.” He reassures him. “After going for so long having so much attention on me, every minute of every day, I’m more than happy to disappear from the attention of the masses.”

“A bit of a lone wolf, you are.” Charles comments, and Erik grins at him. 

“You could say that.”

“And you feel that this club is...safe?”

He nods. “Yes. I trust the staff, and the patrons aren’t suspicious--I’m more likely to get reported to the police if I was in midtown singing for straight people, I know it.”

Charles laughs. “Are you--?”

A nod. “Yes. Once I thought I wasn’t, but I’ve found I much prefer the company of a man over a woman.”

“Hear hear. If I had a drink, I’d toast to that.” Charles says, miming raising a glass with his empty hand. 

“Thank you, Mr. Xavier.” Erik replies, jokingly, and Charles shakes his head at him.

“Please, that’s for my students. Call me Charles.”

“Well then, Charles. I appreciate your patronage.”

Charles thinks that he quite likes Erik Lehnsherr’s company when he’s off the stage. He’s well-spoken, honest to a fault, sarcastic to a degree, and still quite devilishly handsome--with every passing moment Charles spends in his presence, he becomes a little bit more besotted with him.

“And _I_ appreciate your musical proclivities.” He answers Erik, and because he’s feeling brave, he adds on: “I would also like to ask you if you’d like to get out of here and go somewhere.”

Erik sucks in a breath through his teeth, like he’s thinking about it, and after looking back at his belongings on the table he turns to Charles with a firm nod. “Sure, but I’d like that somewhere to be my place. Give me ten minutes, I’ll meet you out back.”

Surprised that he accepted at all, Charles stands there with his mouth half open like a codfish for a second before he returns to reality and snaps to attention. “Yes! Yes, alright, I’ll--” He inches toward the door to the dressing room. “--I’ll be there. See you in a, in a bit.” He says, stumbling over his words. Erik chuckles, a deep rumbling in his chest, and good-naturedly shoos him out the door with a wave of his hand. Charles slips out and closes the door behind him, continuing down the hallway to step out into the back alley to wait.

He had, in simple terms, just snagged a date. A date with a man who was, arguably, the man of his dreams. Sometimes his luck just confounded him entirely.

Charles hangs around in the cold air outside while he waits for Erik to join him, lighting up a cigarette of his own out of the pack in an inside jacket pocket and staring at the glowing orange embers as they fall off onto the ground, snuffing themselves out. The nicotine makes his head pleasantly fuzzy, and while he doesn’t like the smell he can appreciate the warmth it gives him. He exhales smoke out of his nose and looks up at the night sky in-between skyscrapers, at the few stars that are visible through cloud and smog.

The back door to the club opens on his right soon enough, and Erik, now cleaned up and wearing a dark coat over his clothing and with a bag slung over his shoulder, emerges from it. He shoots Charles a smile when he sees him, and with a short laugh feels around in his coat for his pack of Camels. When he finds one, he sticks one in his mouth just like he did before, and glances over at Charles.

“Suppose I didn’t really finish that first one, did I.” he says, and Charles huffs a laugh around his cig.

“No. Still need a light?”

“I don’t think so.” Erik says after a second, and then he leans in close to Charles and very carefully touches the end of his cigarette to the end of the one in Charles’ mouth, letting it catch flame from the already-burning embers. Their faces are less than a foot apart and Erik’s eyes light up gold in the bright spot of firelight offered by their smokes.

When Erik leans away and takes a drag, says “Thank you.” with his exhale, Charles is lost for words. If he were a younger man he’d maybe swoon or kiss him right then and there, but he had tact, he swore he did, so he just clears his throat and taps the ashes off the end of his cigarette so he has an excuse to look away from his singer.

“No problem.” He wheezes, and he can hear Erik chuckling under his breath.

He pats Charles on the shoulder and motions out onto the street. “Come on. We’ll catch the 3 to the Bronx a few blocks up.”

“The Bronx?” Charles asks, following Erik out when he turns on his heel and exits the alley. “You live closer than I thought.”

“Well, I’ve always favored convenience over any kind of scenic view.” Erik hums, leading Charles down the street. They fall into an easy rhythm with each other, both in conversation and stride, and the ten minutes or so they spend talking about pointless things is the most relaxing part of Charles’ day thus far. 

The ride to Erik’s stop in the Bronx is long, but it’s not of any issue. The more they talk to each other the more Erik relaxes around Charles, the more the tension in his shoulders and his jaw visibly decreases. They spend the ride there chattering away like old friends: Among other things, Charles tells him about his science curriculum he was planning for the next semester of his school and Erik asks him for song recommendations he could possibly perform at the club sometimes. He tells Erik he’d love to hear something from Ozzie Nelson, and Erik tells him _of course you’d like to hear that, Charles_ and then doesn’t elaborate on why. For some reason unbeknownst to either of them, that’s hilarious, and they laugh all the way out of Manhattan.

They get off the train a good distance into the Bronx, and Erik leads Charles down streets until they’re walking along rows of tall brownstones, lights in windows alternating off and on like a chess board. “You live around here?” Charles asks, and Erik shakes his head.

“Still a ways away. I have a stop to make first.”

Charles nods in agreement, and walks alongside Erik as they meander down lamplit streets and listen to the nighttime orchestra of the city.

A short while later, Erik turns a corner and walks up the steps to a building sitting on the end of a block, and Charles looks up at it to see a star of David displayed on its front. A synagogue.

“Wait here. I’ll be right back.” Erik tells him, and without commenting on anything Charles hangs out near the front doors and watches distantly as his companion digs in his bag, pulls out a rumpled fedora, smooths it out so that it looks nice, and puts it on before he goes inside.

It’s late, but there are still people inside and the lights are on, strangely enough. What looks like a bridge game is taking place in one window from outside, and in the main hall a few people are sitting in rows, quietly speaking to each other or silent in prayer. Charles sees Erik say hello to the rabbi at the front of the room, and suppresses his laugh with a smile when he sees the rabbi reach up and pat his cheek like an affectionate relative would. They talk, their lips moving around words Charles can’t read from so far away, and after a minute the both of them leave the main hall and enter another room. Charles leans away from the open front door and goes back to watching the sky.

He’s surprised by Erik when he joins him outside again, distracted in his looking for any visible constellations (there weren’t any), and he’s even more surprised when he turns to actually look at him. In addition to his bag, Erik (now hatless again) has a small child in his arms, propped up on his hip. She’s fast asleep against his shoulder, head tucked into the soft collar of his coat.

Charles blinks. “Who’s this?”

Erik tilts his head down and huffs when he sees the girl is asleep. When he speaks again it’s with wry sarcasm; “Nina, this is Charles. Charles, this is my daughter, Nina.”

He’s a father. Something about that makes Charles’ heart warm in a very enjoyable way. It doesn’t turn him off from Erik’s charms, not at all--in fact, if anything it makes him even more taken with the man. It shined yet another kind of light on him, made Charles see him as a selfless and loving parent working hard to make ends meet even though times were tough. When they start walking again, albeit slightly slower now, he has many questions floating around in his head.

“How old is she?” He asks Erik.

“Four. Small for her age, though.”

Looking at her, Charles can see what Erik means. She’s a petite little thing, not in an unhealthy way but in a delicate, fairylike sort of manner. She’s got thick dark hair and smooth light skin, round cheeks and pink lips. She’s a beautiful girl.

“I had no idea you had a child.”

Erik makes a face. “It’s not like people at work are particularly interested in my family life.” He says, and Charles nods, assenting. If it didn’t affect the job it didn’t matter, was most likely the consensus.

“Mm. And who takes care of her while you’re at the club?”

“The synagogue has a childcare program which I am all too thankful for.” Erik says with a sardonic kind of smile. “I hate, _hate_ leaving her there for so long and so late into the night, but I…” He sighs. “There’s no other options for me out there.”

“Is she in school?” Charles offers. “I could find you somewhere to enroll her, I’m quite positive.”

“She’s still too young for it. I don’t want to risk any parents or staff recognizing me, either.”

A hush falls over the two of them for a moment. Charles really had neglected to think about how deeply and thoroughly Erik’s past must affect his life, and it was uncomfortably sobering. He couldn’t get a well-paying job, he couldn’t let his daughter be seen in public with him...even after escaping the gangs the lifestyle and reputation still followed him wherever he went.

He had absolutely nothing to do with Erik’s past, but Charles felt guilty for it anyway.

He tries to change the subject-- “Well, in any case, it is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Lehnsherr.” Charles says to Nina, who doesn’t respond, still deep in sleep. Erik laughs quietly. “Did you have a past spouse she resulted from?”

“Yes.” Erik says carefully. Charles can practically see the gears turning in his brain from how hard he’s thinking about how to answer his question. “It...didn’t work out. I’ve had her right from the get-go, from the moment she was born.”

“I can’t even imagine what that must be like, raising her alone.” Charles says with a breath out, more speaking his thoughts than anything else.

Erik shrugs. “Not too bad. She’s the...the center of my world, I wouldn’t trade her for anything.”

Charles doesn’t say anything back, but the light coming from the streetlamps lights up his smile enough for Erik to catch it out of the corner of his eye and throw him one back. Charles looks up at him from the side almost bashfully, and their gazes meet for a moment before they both glance away again.

“Does working at the club…” This is a hard question to phrase, Charles thinks. “Does it make enough to live on?”

If Erik’s hands were free Charles gets the feeling he’d be making a ‘sort of’ motion with his hand, from the look he gets. “Not exactly enough for two people, but we manage.” He says, and Charles’ heart sinks.

“I’d help if I could--” he starts, but Erik rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

“I don’t want any charity, Charles, we’re alright. Nina’s healthy and that’s enough for me, okay? The job’s fine.”

“I was just saying,” Charles tries to continue, voice sheepish. “That I’d help if I could, but...teaching doesn’t exactly make me a rich man either.”

With a scoff, Erik replies “Then why tip me so much?”

“I told you earlier. You deserve it.”

That makes the singer go quiet for a moment, thoughtful, and after a second he exhales a gentle laugh. “You’re a bleeding heart, you know that?”

Charles grins. “Someone might’ve told me that once or twice.”

“It’s cute.” Erik says, and Charles reaches up to scratch his face so he doesn’t see his blush.

\--------

Erik lives in a similar brownstone to many of the ones they had passed, and his apartment is up on the third floor. All the lights are off inside at this time of night, except for the one in the tiny lobby right inside the front door, and Erik guides Charles up the stairs in a way so that he avoids the especially squeaky ones and doesn’t trip over anything. He unlocks the door to his place with one hand, still holding the sleeping Nina in his other, and Charles dutifully closes and locks it again behind him after he follows Erik inside.

It’s small--but not much smaller than his own place in Queens. There’s a main room that doubles as a dining room that triples as a kitchen, and then a bedroom, which has a small bathroom attached. When Erik turns a lamp on the entire apartment is lit up in a soft, cozy glow, and despite the chilly night air it’s warm inside. It makes Charles ache to have company in his own apartment one day, to have someone to live with and sleep next to so that the world doesn’t feel so big and lonely. He wonders if having Nina there made Erik less lonely than he would be otherwise.

“Make yourself comfortable, I’ll be right back.” Erik tells Charles, motioning vaguely to the entirety of the sitting room before retreating to the bedroom, presumably to tuck Nina in. Charles takes his jacket off and hangs it over the back of a worn armchair near the fireplace before sinking down into it with a grateful sigh. He rolls his head up and to his right to look out the window, to watch lights in adjacent apartment buildings blink off one by one.

He can hear Erik in his bedroom singing to Nina, his voice that same rumbling hum that had hypnotized him at the club. It’s a lullaby, in a language Charles doesn’t understand, but the sentiment behind Erik’s tone of voice is easy to know: Sleep well, sleep tight, I love you. It almost lulls Charles himself to sleep after a few minutes of listening. He’s got his eyes lightly closed and is motionless in his seat when Erik enters the sitting room again, now without his coat and tie.

“Comfy?” He asks Charles, amused. “Shame. I was thinking of having a glass of wine.”

At that, Charles does straighten back up and blink his eyes open, abashed. “You have a bottle?”

Erik chuckles. “I do--stole it from the last club I worked at. Would you care for a drink?”

“How could I ever say no?” Charles answers him, perhaps a bit too eagerly. He always had time for a drink, especially with such delightful company.

“Great.” Erik says, taking a half-full bottle of red wine out of a cupboard high up in his kitchen. “Don’t expect anything too lavish, it’s a bit too much on the sweet side for me--but alcohol is alcohol.”

Charles couldn’t agree with that more. “My friend, my standards have been at the bottom of the ocean since 1929.”

A laugh-- “That long ago? You and I are more alike than I thought.”

Alike. That was a thought that made something inside Charles heat up. He accepts the glass of wine that Erik hands him once it’s poured and takes a sip, hiding the flush of his cheeks with the dark red of the drink. Erik bends down to light the fireplace and Charles resolutely keeps his eyes looking almost anywhere but his ass. Almost.

When Erik gets up and settles in his own seat next to Charles, Charles makes a show of examining his glass like he was a fine connoisseur of wine. “I see what you mean. Tastes more like grape juice than wine.”

“I never said it was of any good quality.” Erik admits, but Charles waves him off.

“Better something than nothing. Thank you, Erik.”

He hums. “Thank _you,_ Charles. I’m very relieved to find you’re not a gangster coming to kill me and my family.”

Charles knows he’s joking, but it...falls flat. “The last thing I’d want to do to you or your daughter is cause you any kind of pain.” He says seriously. Erik seems to notice his sense of humor was lost on him for the moment, and his expression sobers.

“I believe you. I hope I can believe you.” He says, and Charles leans forward in his seat to address Erik more earnestly, holding his glass between his knees.

“I don’t know how to completely convince you that you can, Erik, but you can. I want you to trust me--moreover, I really would like to see you again after I leave your home tonight.” 

“I want to see you too,” Erik admits, eyes gazing down into the flickering fire. “But I’ve been betrayed before. By people I thought I knew.”

Charles watches him close his eyes and let the shadows made by the flames dance across the lean planes of his face. “I don’t think I could take it if something like that happened to me again.”

“How can I convince you that I’m not out to torment you?” He asks Erik softly, assiduously. “I’ll do anything.”

Erik looks up at him with those haunted eyes, looking hesitant even though they had spent the past couple hours talking and laughing like they had known each other for years. His posture is carefully kept neutral, but Charles can tell his muscles are tense.

“I don’t know.” Erik answers honestly. “Once I thought I did, but I keep being proven wrong.”

Something inside of Charles breaks when he says that. He licks his lips, keeps his gaze on Erik, keeps his distance, but he wants nothing more than to be close to him. To go further than acquaintanceship or friendship. They fit so very perfectly together Charles realized what he had been missing all these years, alone in Queens and far away from his few loved ones he had left.

“I can try to…” He trails off, shifting to the left in his seat so that he and Erik were leaning close together, almost shoulder-to-shoulder. “...I can try to show you.”

And then he leans forward, just so, and Erik leans in to meet him, and so very hesitantly their lips meet. 

It’s dead silent in Erik’s apartment save for the crackling of the fire, and when they pull away from each other they’re still quiet. Charles fears what kissing Erik meant for their relationship, barely a fledgling as it were, but Erik looks less conflicted and/or hostile than Charles thought he would. In fact, he looks...mournful. There’s longing in his eyes, and Charles knows how he feels.

“If this--” He motions between himself and Erik. “--doesn’t go anywhere, if I never end up seeing you again, I...I will think of you.” He says, and Erik nods almost unnoticeably. “If you’d rather I stay more out of your life than in it, that’s fine. I want you to feel safe, and--and it’s not exactly popular for two men to love each other these days, is it.”

They both laugh, though it’s a weak, feeble thing. 

“No one’s ever offered to leave before.” Erik says, with some kind of dark amusement in his voice. Charles hopes that was a good thing to say.

“I would, if you wanted me to.”

Erik sighs dolefully. “And would your poor heart be able to take it?” he says, and it makes Charles relieved to hear him lighten up.

“Yes,” he insists. “And when you’re famous, up on stage, I’ll be there in the audience watching. I’ll be there and I bet I’ll be just as blown away as I was when I first heard you sing, in a little club in uptown Manhattan.”

Charles thinks about the future, a future where Erik has fame and fortune and everything he could possibly want without the risk of being stalked or hurt by his old enemies. Where he’s performing for hundreds of people in a great music hall, backed by an orchestra, and everyone flocks to town to hear the talented Mr. Lehnsherr sing for them. Where he can go home to a larger abode and have a proper nanny to take care of Nina while he’s gone, and she can grow up healthy and happy and Erik doesn’t have to worry about her.

He thinks about it, and he wants it more than anything for the man sitting next to him. Charles meets Erik’s eyes and he’s surprised to find that they’re watery.

Erik swallows, takes a sip of his wine, swipes the back of his hand under his eye briefly. “I expect to see you in the front row.” He tells Charles, and his lips curl up in a melancholy smile.

Charles reaches over the arm of his chair and slides his hand over Erik’s, where it’s sat on his lap. He curls his fingers under his palm and squeezes, and Erik flips his hand around and does the same. The night is quiet around them.

“I think you are extraordinary, Herr Lehnsherr.” Charles whispers. 

Erik squeezes his hand once more. “Thank you, Mr. Xavier.”

**Author's Note:**

> i had a TON of fun writing this one because i've always loved period pieces and the 1930s is one of my favorite decades to work with in fiction. i'm pretty proud of my writing and i enjoy how this turned out very much so i hope you like reading it as much as i liked writing it!!
> 
> please comment to tell me what you think, i'm positively desperate for feedback on this oneshot <:]]]]]] thank you very much!!


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